AI created video of young boy crying near casket
An emotional video circulating on social media appears to show a young boy mourning the death of his father.
“This boy will grow up without his father because of Israel's unchecked militarism and Donald Trump’s unchecked narcissism,” read the text on a March 15 X post, which included a short clip showing a boy and a woman approaching an American flag-draped coffin. Both the woman and the boy appear to be crying and the boy is desperately calling out, “Daddy, daddy.” Three soldiers stand off to the side.
The same video has appeared on TikTok, Instagram, Threads and Facebook, with the caption, “A Hero’s Final Farewell: Heartbreaking moment a son says goodbye to his father lost in the Iran conflict.” The post has more than 1.1 million views.
Heartbreaking, indeed. However, this video is fake, according to PolitiFact. The video was most likely created using artificial intelligence, or AI.
PolitiFact tested the video with an AI detection tool which found it was more than 95% likely that it was created using AI. Also, it was analyzed by a group of AI-detection experts.
“At exactly 10 seconds in length, this is typical of AI-generated videos that max out at 10 to 15 seconds in length,” University of Berkeley, California professor and digital forensics expert Hany Farid told PolitiFact.
The experts also pointed out inconsistencies in the video, such as the boy’s hand disappearing into the flag and the blurry faces of the soldiers.
Similar videos have appeared across social media with several showing the same scene but with different ethnicities and different clothing for the woman and boy.
Post doesn’t show U.S. embassy
A March 3 Facebook post included an image of a building on fire as black smoke is pouring out of the structure.
The caption on the photo has emojis of the Saudi Arabia flag and the Iran flag, and claims, “US embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia was hit by Iran.”
But this image is miscaptioned, according to Reuters. The incident pictured happened before the Iran war.
The U.S. embassy in Riyadh was hit by drones on March 3, according to reports. The photo in this post was actually from a fire in Riyadh but it happened nearly 18 miles from the U.S. embassy in the Saudi Arabia capital. It shows a major fire in the Nasim Ash Sharqi area and video of the incident was originally shared on Feb. 6.
Biden’s math doesn’t add up
Former President Joe Biden was recently talking about his term in office during a speech last month in South Carolina.
“In fact, (in) just my last year as president of the United States in 2024, we created — just the last year — 2.2 million additional jobs,” Biden said during the Feb. 27 speech. “You know how many jobs (Donald) Trump’s created in his first year as president? 185,000 jobs total. That’s it.”
But that is a “flawed comparison,” according to FactCheck.org. The former president exaggerated some of the statistics.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, did report in January 2025 that total employment had increased by 2.2 million jobs during the period that covers Biden’s first year as president. But when the annual reports came out, the figures were revised, updating the most recent report at just more than 1.2 million jobs in that year. That was well before Biden cited the outdated data.
The numbers from January 2025 to January 2026, were also updated. That report has employment increasing by 359,000 jobs in Trump’s first year, almost double the 185,000 jobs Biden gave him credit for.
Carrey was at awards show
Some social media users recently claimed actor Jim Carrey did not attend an awards show in France, instead sending a body double or a clone in his place.
“Jim Carrey: Cloned & replaced. Because who the hell is that guy?!” read the caption on a post that included a video that appeared to show Carrey holding an award and talking about the challenge of giving his acceptance speech in French.
Some users speculated that Carrey was replaced at the awards by makeup artist Alexis Stone. To apparently fuel the controversy, Stone, on Instagram, posted two pictures of Carrey, along with a prophetic face, and wrote, “Alexis Stone as Jim Carrey in Paris.”
But this claim is false, according to Snopes. Carrey received an honorary award on Feb. 26, at the César Awards in France.
Photos and video from the event show Carrey at the ceremony, and Carrey’s publicist told TMZ, “Jim Carrey attended the César Awards, where he accepted his Honorary César Award.”
Carrey did deliver his more than five minute speech in French.
• Bob Oswald is a veteran Chicago-area journalist and former news editor of the Elgin Courier-News. Contact him at boboswald33@gmail.com.